Tag Archives: Primary

News

Ted Cruz trails Donald Trump by 4 points in deep blue Illinois

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Latest CBS news / YouGov poll has Cruz just behind Trump
Latest CBS news / YouGov poll has Cruz just behind Trump

Wow, this is unexpected. A new CBS News poll released Sunday has Ted Cruz trailing trailing Donald Trump by 4 points in Illinois.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump keeps his lead in winner-take-all Florida, at 44 percent over Ted Cruz’s 24 percent and Marco Rubio’s 21 percent. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is tied with Trump 33 percent to 33 percent, in two of the big winner-take-all delegate prizes up on Tuesday.

In Florida, home-state Sen. Marco Rubio has been trying to get traction against Trump, but still trails. Sen. Ted Cruz has overtaken Rubio in Florida. In Illinois Trump also leads, 38 percent to 34 percent over Cruz, who is in striking distance, with Kasich back at 16 percent. The findings across the three states may suggest Cruz is emerging more generally in the minds of many non-Trump voters as the alternative to the frontrunner.

Cruz is in second place in Florida, while Rubio is in third place. I have to think that a poll like this two days before the Florida primary would cause Rubio to drop out and endorse Cruz. Rubio is just trailing by too much to catch Trump.

Red State is reporting that Cruz plans to do FIVE rallies in Illinois on Monday, the final day of campaigning before a number of significant state-level elections on Tuesday.

According Teddy Schleifer of CNN, Ted Cruz’s team has scheduled five separate rallies in Illinois tomorrow as the Senator looks to make one last push in the state. With his surprise second place showing in Michigan, the Cruz team must have seen something in their numbers to think Cruz could do well enough in IL to grab a chunk of delegates away from Donald Trump.

Ted Cruz will rally in:

— Rockford, IL
— Glen Ellyn, IL
— Peoria, IL
— Decatur, IL
— Springfield, IL

— Teddy Schleifer (@teddyschleifer) March 13, 2016

This Tuesday, we’ll see elections from Florida (99), Illinois (69), Missouri (52), North Carolina (72), the Northern Mariana Islands (9) and Ohio (66).

Ted Cruz’s record of conservative achievements

Ted Cruz is also the most qualified candidate running.

Young Conservatives explains his achievements:

  • Graduated valedictorian in 1988 from Second Baptist High School
  • Graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 1992
  • Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1995
  • 1992 U.S. National Debate Champion representing Princeton
  • 1995 World Debating Championship semi-finalist representing Harvard
  • Served a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist, making him the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States
  • Served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008, making him the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the entire country and the longest tenure in Texas history
  • Partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he led the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice
  • Authored over 80 SCOTUS briefs and presented over 40 oral arguments before The Court
  • Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation

Smart guy.

Here are the specifically conservative achievements:

  • In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of 31 states in defense of the principle that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms
  • Presented oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
  • Defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds,
  • Defended the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools
  • Defended the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States

He’s 5 for 9 arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Cruz knows how to convince liberal scholars to come over to his side. That’s what he enjoys – persuading people who disagree with him.

Here’s some of the legislation he introduced:

  • ObamaCare Repeal Act
  • Disarm Criminals and Protect Communities Act
  • Defund Obamacare Act of 2013
  • A bill to amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to permit States to require proof of citizenship for registration to vote in elections for Federal office
  • State Marriage Defense Act of 2014
  • A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the intentional discrimination of a person or organization by an employee of the Internal Revenue Service
  • A bill to prohibit the Department of the Treasury from assigning tax statuses to organizations based on their political beliefs and activities
  • American Energy Renaissance Act of 2014
  • A bill to deny admission to the United States to any representative to the United Nations who has been found to have been engaged in espionage activities or a terrorist activity against the United States and poses a threat to United States national security interests
  • SuperPAC Elimination Act of 2014
  • Free All Speech Act of 2014
  • A bill to prevent the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program unlawfully created by Executive memorandum on August 15, 2012
  • Sanction Iran, Safeguard America Act of 2014

And he has gotten more legislation passed than Marco Rubio in the Senate:

Laws enacted per year in Congress
Laws enacted per year in Congress

He has done something to address so many of the things I’ve been writing about on this blog – voter fraud, IRS discriminating against conservatives, etc. I am a Cruz supporter because I like Cruz, not because I oppose Trump and Rubio.

Related posts

Commentary

Is Donald Trump right to order U.S. troops to commit war crimes?

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Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons
Donald Trump and his friends, the Clintons

David French, who served in the military with distinction, takes a look at Trump’s statements for National Review.

He writes:

Donald Trump fundamentally misunderstands the American military. He sees it as an instrument of savage brutality, restrained only by political correctness. There is no honor. There is no law. If only the military were free to torture, murder, and blaspheme, then America would win its wars. By believing that American soldiers would follow those orders — or would want to follow those orders — he slanders the character of the American military.

For months, he has promised that he would order the military to commit war crimes, torturing militants and targeting their families for execution. He was just as emphatic in promising that those orders would be followed.

He was wrong. There is no scenario under which the military would ever follow directives so offensive to its honor and so blatantly illegal. No man I served with in Iraq would comply with an order to intentionally kill an innocent woman or child, and no officer with a shred of decency or honor would give such an order. The Pentagon has many flaws, but truly bad soldiers are few and far between, and the military is institutionally hard-wired to resist exactly this kind of corruption. Trump would instantly sever the relationship between America’s armed forces and their commander-in-chief just by asking them to do such things.

As Lieutenant General James Mattis put it in a 2005 memorandum to the United States Marine Corps, “Marines fight only enemy combatants.” It should go without saying that the same principle applies to soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Our men and women in uniform do not fight innocent civilians and they do not assault prisoners in their custody. Both the War Crimes Act of 1996 and the Uniform Code of Military Justice bind American soldiers to the laws of war, which prohibit such actions.

Donald Trump promised that American soldiers — at the very least — violate Articles 93, 118, and 128 of the UCMJ. Article 93 prohibits “cruelty and maltreatment,” while Articles 118 and 128 prohibit murder and assault.

Here he is explaining his views:

I’m not sure what Donald Trump is thinking by making these sorts of claims about what he can and cannot make the military do. I know people in the military, and they are the opposite of “hired muscle”. Many of them hold to Judeo-Christian values, and they go into the military in order to serve their country honorably. They see their service as a matter of honor and devotion to the country that has allowed them to live free and be prosperous. Character is at the center of their service, in short. They are trained to think not about themselves, but to think of others first. Acts of self-sacrificial heroism are celebrated in the military. Acts of cruelty and barbarism are shamed.

All you have to do to see this is to read the citations for people who win the Medal of Honor… it shows you what the U.S. Military holds in the highest regard.

Look:

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration that may be awarded by the United States government. It is presented by the President of the United States, in the name of Congress, and is conferred only upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty:

  • While engaged in action against an enemy of the United States;

  • While engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force; or

  • While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.

That’s what serving in the military is about. It’s not about obeying orders, it’s about moral virtues – courage, bravery, selflessness – tested under the most extreme conditions. Military people are who are trained to do the moral thing when their lives are endangered.

If our men and women in uniform were ordered to besmirch their honor in order to serve, they would almost universally disobey orders. The intentional targeting of civilians is something that we do not do. The other side (radical Islamists) targets civilians, but we do not. If Trump were elected, and ordered our fighting men and women to commit war crimes, you could expect a mass exodus of our most patriotic Americans from the armed forces.

News

Who won the debate last night? Winners and losers from the Fox News debate

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Ted Cruz explains policy to little girl who wants to be President

Ted Cruz explains public policy to little girl who wants to be President

The Weekly Standard, which I think favors Rubio slightly over Ted Cruz, posted this:

What Cruz did at the debate was make three parallel cases:

  1. Trump is a fraud who can’t be trusted to keep his word.
  2. Trump is not either conservative or Republican in any meaningful way.
  3. Trump actually is the corruption that he decries.

He advanced these arguments not one at a time, but by interweaving them with specific attacks:

* He positively crushed Trump on the use of foreign labor at Mar-a-Lago. He didn’t just bring up the fact that hundreds of applicants applied for these jobs but that Trump prefers to hire foreigners instead, but included Trump’s line from the last post-debate interview where he claimed that these were jobs American workers couldn’t and wouldn’t do.

* He thoroughly prosecuted Trump on the question of Trump’s off-the-record New York Times interview, which Trump steadfastly refuses to release.

* At the end of the segment on Trump University—where Trump’s best defense was telling voters that they should “wait a few years” to see whether or not he committed fraud, Cruz flashed in with a rapier: “Megyn, let me ask the voters at home, is this the debate you want playing out in the general election?” It was brutal.

* When Trump went to his poll numbers—as he always does—Cruz was ready. Trump touted a terrible CNN poll showing him at 49 percent support. Cruz waited for Trump to double down and defend the integrity of the poll. And then he noted that this same poll also showed Trump losing to Clinton and Cruz beating her.

* When the Second Amendment came up, Trump made a gauzy statement of general support. Cruz then dropped the hammer:

It is easy for political candidates to have rhetoric and say, “I support the Second Amendment.” But you cannot say that and at the same time say what Donald just said, which is that on the question of Supreme Court nominees he wants to compromise and reach a middle ground with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. That’s what he said in the last debate. . . . And I would point out, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer are both Democrats that Mr. Trump has written checks to repeatedly. Any justice that those two sign off on is going to be a left-wing judicial activist who will undermine religious liberty, and we are one vote away from the Heller decision being overturned, which would effectively erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights. Amendment rights, but when you say you’d compromise with Harry Reid, you put that in jeopardy.

* Cruz’s most devastating line was probably this summation:

I understand the folks who are supporting Donald right now. You’re angry. You’re angry at Washington, and he uses angry rhetoric. But for 40 years, Donald has been part of the corruption in Washington that you’re angry about. And you’re not going to stop the corruption in Washington by supporting someone who has supported liberal Democrats for four decades, from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry to Hillary Clinton. You’re not going to stop the corruption and the cronyism by supporting someone who has used government power for private gain.

The question is what Cruz’s performance gets him. Maybe nothing. The terrain ahead could simply be too tough. But maybe not.

Watch this:

Someone has been teaching Cruz how to speak more concisely. Ted and Marco didn’t attack each other much last night, just like in the last debate. And it worked!

Red State, which is a grassroots conservative web site whose contributors back all different candidates, said:

WINNERS

Senator Ted Cruz: Tonight’s big winner was clearly and indisputably Ted Cruz. Cruz showed the most substance and had the strongest answers. His line about charging Snowden with treason, like his answers on ethanol before the Iowa caucus, showed he’s able to give tough, definitive answers to questions that are controversial even within the party. His touting of his Supreme Court credentials was not only a great case but a timely one.

And when Megyn Kelly eviscerated Trump over his disastrous Trump University failure, it seemed the smoking corpse couldn’t possibly suffer more abuse. But Ted Cruz stepped in and in a few sentences buried that corpse, salted the earth, and wiped the name and location from this history books. Utterly. Destroyed.

But best of all was that Cruz masterfully avoided being in the line of fire, and above the fray in Trump and Rubio’s heated exchanges. Sometimes that doesn’t play well. Sometimes it makes you the winner. This is one of the latter times.

Senator Marco Rubio: Rubio was also a winner tonight. He has proved beyond the shadow of doubt how weak Donald Trump is before attacks on his tremendous, yuge vanity. He crumples. He falls apart. He talks about his ding dong. The extent to which Marco can easily send Trump into a panic by mentioning his hands or tan is just a shadow of how easily the Democrats will handle him. They won’t have to mention policy. Just his hair. Or his stump fingers. He’ll fall apart.

Marco also crushed Trump’s lack of substance on foreign policy, asking him if he would ever offer any policy details in answer to a foreign policy question. Predictably, Trump responded by taking a petty swipe at Rubio. Yet another point for Marco and against Donald.

LOSERS

Donald Trump: Trump is the obvious, clear loser tonight. It wasn’t even close. He was clownish, he changed his mind over the course of the debate, he had his butt handed to him over and over by both Marco and Ted. He was found to be making false statements, his economic policy was proved not only to be a disaster, but it was shown that he himself couldn’t even articulate it, much less a defense of it. He couldn’t even muster a strong response to the Romney question. On the scale of fail he hit a solid ten: total dumpster fire.

Except for one thing. Donald promised to support the nominee of the party no matter who it is. That was a good line for him, even if he doesn’t mean it, and will play well for him.

And Erick Erickson, another grassroots conservative, says at The Resurgent that Cruz was the clear winner of the debate:

Wow. That was one heck of a debate performance by Ted Cruz. That was just amazing. He ran circles around Trump. Trump looked like he was worn out. He was low energy. He was a loser.

In the last debate, Rubio was assisted by Cruz. In this debate, Cruz was assisted by Rubio. It shows what a unity ticket between the two could do.

It was a remarkable performance that had Cruz and Rubio shaking hands during commercial break.

Tonight was Ted Cruz’s night and it was a nearly flawless debate on his part.

PJ Media listed out 5 of Cruz’s best moments in the debate.

Here’s one of them:

5. Detroit…Has Been Utterly Decimated By Failed Left-Wing Policies Although most of Cruz’s standout moments came in opposition to Trump, one of his finest successes centered around discussing the city of Detroit. “Detroit is a great city, with a magnificent legacy, that has been utterly decimated by 60 years of failed left-wing policies,” Cruz declared. He praised Detroit for “funding the arsenals of democracy” in World War II, and added that “in the 1960s, Detroit was the Silicon Valley of America — it had the highest per capita income in the country.” Then the kicker: “And then for 50 years, left-wing Democrats have pursued destructive tax policies, weak crime policies, and have driven the citizens out.” Cruz then detailed how he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. and Detroit specifically. This strong answer bolstered Cruz in the eyes of Luntz’s focus group, scoring a 96 percent.

Trump tried to get Marco and Ted off his chest by citing GOP primary poll numbers, but Cruz had an answer for that, too. Trump cited a poll from CNN showing him in the lead. Cruz responded by pointing out that the CNN poll also shows Trump losing to Hillary Clinton by 8 POINTS. The same poll shows Cruz beating Hillary Clinton head-to-head. I have never met a Trump supporter who was aware of these head-to-head polls that show Trump losing to Clinton. But the liberal media is well aware of them, and that’s why they are so supportive of Trump – they want the weakest candidate to be the Republican nominee.

One of the differences between Trump and Cruz is that Trump talks about himself and makes promises without providing details. He oversimplifies problems, and has more confidence than experience. Cruz talks about specific policies and the results of those policies in different times and places. He actually knows what works and what doesn’t work, and has a record of solving actual problems.

News

Cruz wins primaries that are “closed” for Republican voters only

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GOP primary delegate count after Super Tuesday
GOP primary delegate count after Super Tuesday

I have some great news. I found out why Cruz unexpectedly lost South Carolina. It turns out that in states that have “open” primaries, that anyone can vote – including Democrats! Cruz is losing some states because Democrats are declining to vote in their own primary, and instead voting in the Republican primary. They are voting for the Republican who is the easiest to beat in head-to-head polls: Donald Trump.

Here’s what the Boston Herald reported:

Nearly 20,000 Bay State Democrats have fled the party this winter, with thousands doing so to join the Republican ranks, according to the state’s top elections official.

Secretary of State William Galvin said more than 16,300 Democrats have shed their party affiliation and become independent voters since Jan. 1, while nearly 3,500 more shifted to the MassGOP ahead of tomorrow’s “Super Tuesday” presidential primary.

So that explains why Cruz is not winning everything. Cruz wins primaries that are closed, so that only people who register as Republicans can vote – not registered Democrats.

But some states allow Democrats to vote in Republican primaries without any change in registration.

Look at how it’s explained in the leftist Washington Post:

Following the South Carolina primary, an interesting article by Michael Harrington went around Facebook that speculated that Donald Trump’s victory in the South Carolina primary was attributable to Democrats voting in the Republican (open) primary. One of the good things about Harrington’s article is that he put out a testable hypothesis — that turnout in the Democratic primary a few days later would be less than 390,000. In fact, it was 367,000. Harrington concludes that had South Carolina had a closed primary, Ted Cruz would have won the primary there. I don’t know him and the author seems to be anti-Trump based on other things he has written — but the fact that his prediction was borne out adds some independent verification to his thesis. So that got me to thinking.

[…][S]o far the primary calendar has been heavily tilted toward open primaries. But there have been four closed elections: the Iowa caucus, the Nevada caucus, and Super Tuesday’s Oklahoma primary and Alaska caucus. Ted Cruz won three of those four closed elections.

[…][T]here are four Republican primaries/caucuses: Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine. All are closed.

Then, once the winner-takes-all states begin, a large number of those are closed primaries and caucuses as well (including Florida, for what it’s worth).

[…]First, the fact that South Carolina and most of the SEC primaries were open primaries may very well explain why those states did not turn out to be Ted Cruz’s firewall or launch states as he had predicted. Oklahoma did perform as expected, being a fairly comfortable win for Cruz.

This is something that the Republican National Committee really needs to fix, along with requiring photo identification and proof of residency in order to vote. We can’t allow a bunch of Democrats to come in and pick a raving con man as our candidate, in order to make it easier on their candidate in November. No wonder we haven’t been winning elections!

Anyway, there is more good news. Shane Vander Hart has it up on his Caffeinated Thoughts blog.

He writes:

The next few contests on March 5 are ones where Cruz could do well Kansas and Kentucky which are both caucus states that rely upon organization. Cruz could also do well in Louisiana which is a closed primary. On March 8th you have Idaho Primary which is a closed primary that doesn’t favor Trump. Mississippi has an open primary, but I suspect Cruz will be competitive. Michigan on March 8th is an open primary which favors Trump.

So not only are there more upcoming closed primaries, but some of the states are caucus states, where having a good ground game makes a difference. We should be optimistic about Cruz’s chances in the next week.

Commentary

Which candidate is best at working with Democrats to get things done?

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The Jesus Seminar and their pre-suppositions
Republican voters need to go beyond the surface level in assessing candidates

I have a few friends who I know are supporting either Donald Trump or Marco Rubio in the election. I have asked them specifically what policies, accomplishments and past battles they like best about their candidate.

Donald Trump supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Republicans)
  • he tells it like it is
  • he’s going to build a fence  and make Mexico pay for it
  • he’s a businessman

Marco Rubio supporters say this:

  • he’s leading in the polls (vs Democrats)
  • he’s handsome
  • I like the way he talks
  • his wife was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, so she is prettier and funner than nerdy workaholic Harvard MBA Heidi Cruz

My candidate is Ted Cruz, and the Trump supporters tend to have no problem with him. But the Rubio supporters don’t like Cruz. So I made a list of their objections to Cruz.

The Rubio supporters say this:

  • (quoting Donald Trump) not one of his colleagues in the Senate has endorsed him
  • he won’t be able to convince other people to get things done
  • I don’t like the way he talks
  • he has a pickle nose
  • he said he wanted to make Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill “better” but  his amendment actually killed the amnesty bill – that means he’s a liar because his amendment didn’t make the bill better

Regarding the point about Ted Cruz not being able to get along with his colleagues in the Senate, that’s actually false. First, Cruz and Rubio came into the Senate at the same time, and Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio. That might be because Rubio has the worst attendance record in the Senate.

When Rubio works together with people, he authors an amnesty bill, he supports the failed Libya invasion, he gives in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, he weakens border security, he authors a bill to remove the due process rights of men falsely accused of rape on campus, he skips votes to defund Planned Parenthood, he is liberal on the issue of gay marriage, his deputy campaign manager is a gay activist, and so on. In short, he works with liberals on liberal priorities – that’s why he is likable to them.

Ted Cruz gets into trouble with his colleagues, because he tries to stop the spending, stop amnesty, stop the military interventions in Syria, Libya and Egypt, etc. That’s why he is not likable to them.

What about the point that Cruz would not be persuasive to Democrats, and so would not be able to get anything done? Well, we already saw that Cruz has passed more legislation than Rubio, despite having a pickle nose. But he’s also shown the ability to pull Democrats towards his point of view.

Here’s an article from PJ Media to explain:

Now that Cruz regularly polls toward the top of an ever-shrinking field, his early tenure bears closer scrutiny. Cruz has gained fame as a social conservative and an unwavering opponent of Obamacare. In his first major leadership role, however, he developed economic policy as the director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Policy Planning.

At the FTC, Cruz’s agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman.

Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the “Uber of American politics.”

Moreover, and perhaps surprising to some, Cruz sought and secured a broad, bipartisan consensus for his agenda. Almost all of Cruz’s initiatives received unanimous support among both Republicans and Democrats.

Ted Cruz a consensus-builder? He was, at the FTC.

[…]Beyond the e-commerce initiative, Cruz also reoriented the FTC’s use of antitrust laws.

[…]Cruz also sent dozens of letters to states to fight new efforts to enshrine crony capitalism.

[…]Perhaps surprisingly, Cruz secured a high degree of consensus in pursuing his agenda.

As an independent agency, the FTC has five commissioners, and during Cruz’s tenure, two of them had served in President Clinton’s administration. All five commissioners voted to support almost all of Cruz’s proposals.

Cruz achieved this consensus by listening to policy experts and political opponents. He listened to the FTC’s economic experts and marshaled empirical economic analysis to support his policy objectives. He solicited input from prominent Democrats, including the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who spoke at the e-commerce conference. In addition, Cruz worked to develop personal relationships across the aisle. He regularly met with Democratic commissioners and incorporated their ideas into his policy proposals.

The article explains Cruz’s conservative agenda in detail; increasing competition, protecting consumers, and so on. But he wasn’t likable in the way that Marco Rubio was likable – by pushing a Democrat agenda. He was likable by convincing Democrats to push a conservative agenda. He did it by gathering evidence and making his case. And that’s what you expect from a lawyer who wins cases for conservatives at the Supreme  Court.